THE SHIPS, COMMERCE, AND NAVIGATION OF THE PHŒNICIANS—THEIR TRADE WITH OPHIR—SIDON AND TYRE—THEIR VOYAGE ROUND AFRICA—NEW TYRE—A PATRIOTIC PHŒNICIAN CAPTAIN—THE EGYPTIANS AS A MARITIME PEOPLE—THEIR SHIPS AND COMMERCE—THE JEWS—THEIR GEOGRAPHY—IDEAS UPON THE SHAPE OF THE EARTH—THE WORLD AS KNOWN TO THE HEBREWS.

It is upon the shores of the Mediterranean, alike the sea of the Bible and of mythology, of Mount Ararat and Mount Olympus,—among the Phoenicians, the Egyptians, and the Hebrews,—that we must look for the earliest traces of navigation and commerce. The most cursory inspection of a map of Palestine, Phoenicia, and Egypt will show how admirably these countries were situated for trade both by land and sea. The Phoenicians, though confined to the narrow slip of land between Mount Lebanon and the Mediterranean, possessed a safe coast and the admirable harbor of Sidon, while their mountains furnished them an abundant supply of the best woods for ship-building. The confined limits of their own territory prevented them from being themselves producers or manufacturers,—a circumstance which naturally led them to be the carriers of producing and manufacturing nations whose maritime advantages were inferior to their own. The fact, also, that the Jews were prevented by their government, laws, and religion from engaging extensively in commerce, and that the Egyptians were characteristically averse to the sea, augmented the commercial supremacy of the Phoenicians,—a supremacy recognised both in the sacred writings and in profane records.

It is now generally conceded that the date of the maritime enterprises which rendered the Phoenicians famous in antiquity must be fixed between the years 1700 and 1100 before Christ. The renowned city of Sidon was the centre from which their expeditions were sent forth. What was the specific object of these excursions, or in what order of time they took place, is but imperfectly known: it would appear, however, that their adventurers traded at first with Cyprus and Rhodes, then with Greece, Sardinia, Sicily, Gaul, and the coast of Spain upon the Mediterranean. About 1250 b.b., their ships ventured cautiously beyond the Straits of Gibraltar, and founded Cadiz upon a coast washed by the Atlantic. A little later they founded establishments upon the western coast of Africa. Homer asserts that at the Trojan War, 1194 bc., the Phoenicians furnished the belligerents with many articles of luxury and convenience; and we are told by Scripture that their ships brought gold to Solomon from Ophir, in 1000 b.c. Tyre seems now to have superseded Sidon, though at what period is not known. It had become a flourishing mart before 600 b.c. who lived at that time, has left a glowing and picturesque description of its wealth, which must have proceeded from a long-established commerce. He enumerates, among the articles used in building the Tyrian ships, the fir-trees of Senir, the cedars of Lebanon, the oaks of Bashan, the ivory of the Indies, the linen of Egypt, and the purple of the Isles of Elishah. He mentions, as brought to the great emporium from Syria, Damascus, Greece, and Arabia, silver, tin, lead, and vessels of brass; slaves, horses, mules; carpets, ebony, ivory, pearls, and silk; wheat, balm, honey, oil, and gum; wine, wool, and iron.

It is about this period—600 b.c.—that the Phoenicians, though under Egyptian commanders, appear to have performed a voyage which, if authentic, may justly be regarded as the most important in their annals,—a circumnavigation of Africa. The extent of this unknown region, and the peculiar aspects of man and nature there, had already drawn toward it in a particular degree the attention of the ancient world. The manner in which its coasts converged, south of the Mediterranean and the Red Sea, suggested the idea of a peninsula, the circumnavigation of which might be effected even by the limited resources of the early naval powers. The first attempt in this direction originated in a quarter which had been accustomed, from its agricultural avocations, to hold itself aloof from every species of maritime enterprise. It was undertaken by order of Necho, king of Egypt,—the Pharaoh Necho of the Scriptures,—and is recorded by Herodotus as follows:

"When Necho had desisted from his attempts to join the Red Sea with the Mediterranean by means of a canal at the Isthmus of Suez, he despatched some vessels, under the guidance of Phoenician pilots, with orders to sail down the Red Sea and follow the coast of Africa: they were to return to Egypt by the Pillars of Hercules and the Mediterranean. The Phoenicians, therefore, taking their course by way of the Red Sea, sailed onward to the Southern Ocean. Upon the approach of autumn they landed in Libya and planted corn in the place where they first went ashore. When this was ripe they cut it down and set sail again. Having in this manner consumed two years, in the third they passed the Pillars of Hercules and returned to Egypt. This story may be believed by others, but to me it appears incredible, for they affirm that when they sailed round Libya they had the sun on their right hand."

In the time of Herodotus, the Greeks were unacquainted with the phenomenon of a shadow falling to the south,—one which the Phoenicians would naturally have witnessed had they actually passed the Cape of Good Hope, for the sun would have been on their right hand, or in the north, and would thus have projected shadows to the south. As this story was not one likely to have been invented in the time of Necho, it is the strongest proof that could be adduced of the reality of the voyage. Doubts have been raised in modern times upon the accuracy of the narrative; but the objections are considered as having been refuted by Rennell and Heeren. Bartholomew Diaz has the credit of having discovered and having been the first to double the Cape of Good Hope, in 1486: it is clear that, if the claims of the Phoenician pilots are to be regarded, Diaz was preceded in this path at least twenty centuries.

Soon after the date of this voyage, Tyre was besieged and destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar. The inhabitants succeeded in escaping with their property to an island near the shore, where they founded New Tyre, which soon surpassed, both in commerce and shipping, the city they had abandoned. The Phoenicians seem now to have advanced with their system of colonization farther to the south upon the coast of Africa, and farther to the north upon the coast of Spain. They discovered the Cassiterides—now the Scilly Islands—upon the coast of Cornwall, and retained the monopoly of the trade in the tin which they found there. They carried spices and perfumes, obtained from Arabia, to Greece, where they were employed for sacrifice and incense. They also sold there the manufactures, purple, and jewels of Tyre and Sidon. From Spain they obtained silver, corn, wine, oil, wax, wool, and fruits. They procured amber in some place which they visited in the North,—doubtless the shores of the Baltic. As the value of this article was equal to that of gold, they desired to retain the monopoly of the trade and to keep all knowledge of the regions yielding it from their commercial rivals. Hence the secret was most carefully hoarded.

A remarkable circumstance connected with the maritime history of the Phoenicians was their jealousy of the influence of foreigners. When a strange ship was observed to keep them company at sea, they would either outsail her, or at night change their course and disappear. On one occasion a Phoenician captain, finding himself pursued by a Roman vessel, ran his ship aground and wrecked her, rather than lose the secret which a capture would have revealed. This act was deemed so patriotic that the government rewarded him, and compensated him for the loss of his vessel. New Tyre was destroyed by Alexander the Great, 324 b.c. The inhabitants were either put to death or sold as slaves, and thus the maritime glory of the Phoenicians came to an untimely end.

Little is known of the construction and equipment of Phoenician ships. All that can be said with certainty is, that there were two kinds,—those employed in commerce and those used for war,—a distinction, indeed, which all nations, both ancient and modern, have found it convenient to make. The hulls of the trading-vessels were round, that they might carry more goods, while the fighting-ships were longer and sharp at the bottom. In other respects they probably resembled the vessels of Greece and Rome, for which they undoubtedly furnished models. Of these fuller details have reached us, and we shall speak of them in their place. The Phoenicians were better astronomers than the unskilful navigators who had preceded them; for, while these attempted to guide their course by the imperfect aid of the constellation known as the Great Bear,—some of whose stars are forty degrees from the pole,—the Phoenicians were the first to apply to maritime purposes the Lesser Bear,—the group which has furnished to more modern navigation the North or Polar Star. It is not probable that they fixed upon this particular star, for at that period—1250 years b.c.—it was eighteen degrees from the pole, too distant to serve any positive astronomical purpose.

We come now to the Egyptians as a maritime people in the earliest historical periods, of whom we have incidentally said that they were characteristically disinclined to enter with spirit into any maritime enterprises, whether for commerce or war. This may have been owing to the want of proper timber, to the insalubrity of the sea-coasts, and to the absence of good harbors; while the advantages presented by the Nile for intercourse and traffic with the interior precluded the necessity of resorting to commerce by sea. Sesostris, who lived about 1650 years before Christ, is supposed to have been the first king who overcame the dislike of the Egyptians to the water. Herodotus assigns him a large fleet in the Red Sea, and other historians attribute to him fleets upon the Mediterranean. Upon his death, his subjects relapsed into their former aversion for commerce. Bocchoris, 700 b.c., imitated and revived his legislation upon the subject; and during the reign of Psammeticus the ports of Egypt were first opened to foreign ships, and intercourse with the Greeks was for the first time encouraged. It was Necho, the successor of Psammeticus, who employed, 600 b.c., the Phoenicians in the voyage around Africa of which we have spoken; and this enterprise bespeaks a monarch bent on maritime discovery. Apries, the grandson of Necho, took the city of Sidon by storm and defeated the Phoenicians in a sea-fight. It is probable that the Egyptians, had they continued independent, would have become distinguished as a commercial people; but seventy years afterwards they were conquered by the Persians, and became successively subject to the Macedonians and Romans.

We possess but little knowledge of the construction and equipment of the Egyptian ships. According to Herodotus, they were built of planks of the thorn-tree, fastened together, like tiles, with a great number of wooden pins, and were entirely without ribs. On the inside papyrus was used for stopping the crevices. The sails were made of the papyrus, or of twisted rushes. These vessels were always towed up the Nile, while they descended the stream in the following manner. The current not acting with sufficient force upon their flat bottoms, the sailors hung a bundle of tamarisk over the prow and let it down under the keel by a rope: the stream, bearing upon this bundle, carried the boat along with great celerity.

The Jews, whose country was ill situated for commerce by sea, were even more averse than the Egyptians to intercourse with foreigners and to maritime occupations. Joppa was the only seaport of Judea and Jerusalem, and into it many of the articles used by Solomon in the construction of the Temple were imported. During Solomon's reign, he employed the ships of his ally, Hiram, King of Tyre, in commercial avocations, for which his own people were not fitted. It is among the Jews, whose history is given in the Scripture with so much detail, that we should naturally look for the earliest geographical records. The sacred writers, however, seem to have entertained no idea of any system of geography, having been occupied with the affairs of the world to come, to the total exclusion of the concerns of the mundane earth. They do not even allude to any such branch of learning as being then in existence. It is clear that the Hebrews never attempted to form any theory upon the structure and shape of the globe. Their ideas with regard to the boundaries of the known world may be vaguely inferred from the tenth chapter of Genesis, from the chapters treating of the commerce of Tyre, and from various detached allusions in the prophets.

The idea, common to all uninstructed people, that the earth is a flat surface and the heaven a firmament or curtain spread over it, prevails throughout the Bible. The abode of darkness and of the shadow of death was conceived to be a deep pit beneath it. One sacred writer speaks of the earth as being "hung upon nothing;" another speaks of the "pillars of the earth," and another of the "pillars of heaven." These allusions show sufficiently that, though the writers of those days were impressed by the external view of the grand scenes of nature, they did not endeavor to group them into any regular system.

The localities always alluded to as being at the farthest bounds of their geographical knowledge are Tarshish, Ophir, the Isles, Sheba, Dedan, The River, Gog, Magog, and the North. The first has given rise to infinite discussion. The best theory makes it the name of Carthage, and gives it, by extension, to the whole continent of Africa. Ophir is probably Sofala, on the eastern coast of Africa. The Isles are thought to have been the southern coasts and promontories of Europe, Greece, Italy, &c., which were supposed at that period to be insular. Sheba was SabÆa, or Arabia Felix. Dedan is supposed to have been a port in the Persian Gulf. The River was the Euphrates, beyond which were tracts indefinitely known as Elam and Media, and still beyond a region known as "The Ends of the Earth." Gog, Magog, and the North have been usually supposed to refer to the inhabitants of Scythia and Sarmatia, and the hyperborean nations in general, though a later and more natural theory makes them refer to the migratory shepherds and warriors of Cappadocia, Phrygia, and Galatia. It thus appears that the primitive Israelites knew little beyond the limits of their own country, Egypt, and the regions lying between the Mediterranean, or the Sea, and the Euphrates. A knowledge of the water, we have already remarked, is essential to the formation of any correct and adequate idea of the shape and extent of the land. The Jews had never ventured forth upon the sea for the discovery of new regions, and were, in consequence, ignorant even of that in which they dwelt. We shall find that the Greeks and Romans, whose maritime history we shall now briefly narrate, approached the truth in regard to the form and extent of the world, precisely as their commerce expanded and their ambition for conquest and colonization augmented.